> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.plain.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Search engine and AI discovery

> How search engines and AI assistants read your Help Center, and the metadata they see.

Search engines and AI assistants read your Help Center to judge whether content is current and who wrote it. Every public Help Center publishes what they look for, with the author and last updated date on each article. There is nothing to configure.

## Discovery surfaces

* **Article pages**: JSON-LD with `author`, `publisher`, `datePublished`, and `dateModified`, plus matching meta tags

* **Markdown**: append `.md` to an article URL for the Markdown version, with `author`, `published`, and `updated` in the frontmatter

* **`llms.txt`**: at the root of your domain, lists every published article with its Markdown URL, description, author, and updated date

* **`sitemap.xml`**: lists every page with a `lastmod` timestamp

An article line in `llms.txt`:

```plaintext theme={null}
- [Quickstart](https://help.yourcompany.com/article/quickstart.md): Get your team live in four phases. (author: Youmna, updated: 2026-09-02)
```

## Who is named as the author

The author is the public name of the user who created the article. Articles created by a [machine user](/docs/agents/machine-users), by Plain, or by a user who has left the workspace are attributed to your workspace instead.

`published` is the last publish time and is absent on drafts.

## Private Help Centers

A Help Center behind authentication publishes the same surfaces, but only to authenticated visitors, so search engines and AI crawlers can't read them.